A New Study of the Gruta de Chac, Yucatán, México

Introduction

In summer of 1998, a new study took place at the Gruta de Chac (Chac cave), a deep water cave located within the Puuc hills region of Northern Yucatán (Figure 1). The Chac cave has been a place of great interest ever since John Lloyd Stephens (1963) wrote about his explorations there in 1841. Although others have investigated and written about the cave since Stephens, including Henry Mercer (1975) in 1895 and Edwin Shook in the 1950s, it was not until the efforts of E. Wyllys Andrews IV in 1962 that any serious archaeological work took place there (Andrews IV, 1965). Andrews IV collected a large sample of pottery from the cave and was able to reconstruct a number of orange ware and slateware water jars, including painted designs on the now famous black-on-red-on-orange Chac Polychrome, stylistically dated to the Early Classic period. Andrews IV, however, he does not discuss any of the nearby ruins (Chac I) including the large "X" building complex reported to be about 100 m to the SW (Sabloff et. al., 1985; Dunning, 1991:175).

Four seasons of fieldwork at the Maya center of Chac II, less than 1 km south of the Chac cave, are providing exciting new information about a major Puuc region center of the Early-Middle Classic periods (A.D. 300-700) (Smyth et al., 1998; Smyth, 1998). In fact, it is likely that Chac II was the original settlement from which nearby Sayil emerged during the Terminal Classic period (A.D. 800-1000) and probably represents one of the first substantial settlements in the eastern Puuc sub-region. In addition, the evidence for contact with non-Maya groups perhaps reaching to Central México provides a possible answer for the long unexplained presence of non-Maya decorative elements found on Puuc architecture.

The new data from Chac II required a reexamination of the Gruta de Chac to establish the precise chronological and settlement relationships between the cave site and the center of Chac II. Indeed, was the Gruta an important Classic period pilgrimage site associated the Maya rain gods (Chacs), a role perhaps not unlike that of the Sacred Cenote of Chichén Itzá during the Postclassic? The fame of such a sacred place of holy and life sustaining waters may provide one reason for early settlement buildup in this difficult semi-arid tropical environment.

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